


dissociation

by Tropical



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 16:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7446304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tropical/pseuds/Tropical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shame we don’t have any chrysanthemums today, the man says.</p>
<p>It’s okay, Shiro says.  Everyone always brings those.<br/>-<br/>or: Shiro pays a visit to his roots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dissociation

Up in the hills, there is a cemetery, forgotten by most of the general population.  It has two undertakers, and the water rationing means the grass is coarse and scraggly.  It never rains.  

There is always a breeze.

-

Shiro stands over a grave, one of many.  There are bits of moss growing in the etchings, scum floating in the jars.  But the sun hasn’t yet bleached the color from the plastic flowers, and the chrysanthemums aren’t completely wilted.  Someone must have visited, but not too recently.

Despite the chill nipping at him, Shiro rolls up his pants and sleeves, and sets a spare bucket under the spigot to fill.  Several minutes of scouting rewards him with a brush, abandoned in the weeds by the groundskeeper’s shed.

He turns the valve off, and gets to work.  Drooping bouquets are gathered together, and picked through – rotten flowers in one pile, the rest in another.  Murky water is tossed out with the withered blossoms, and exchanged for new.  He dunks his salvaged brush, shivers, and scrubs the gunk out of the chiseled _mon_ on each headstone.  Borrows a hose from the shed, and rinses away the filth, again and again until the graves gleam.

Four names, a first and middle paired with another’s, and numbers inscribed below.

_Shirogane_ , emblazoned at the top.

-

North, south, through the desert, over the sea.  It didn’t matter where they were – each year, Takashi and his family and his family’s family would make time.

This is your great grandmother, Takashi, she was so tall.  This is your second cousin, Takashi, such a tragedy.  This is your father.

-

This is you, Shiro.

-

He remembers bits and pieces from his childhood.  How the grave cleanings were more like reunions, when distant relatives from all over would make the pilgrimage.  He remembers the tedium of traveling, of cleaning, the excitement of seeing cousins his age.  The disappointment when Auntie got mad at them all for spraying each other with the hose.  The chill when the breeze returned.

Their shivers never lasted long though; the adults would take pity on the children, and send them off to lie in the sun.  Once they’d dried out, there would come spare blankets, jackets offered up by uncles and still warm with lingering heat.  They would play, running and laughing, scattering when someone shushed at them for being too loud, didn’t they have any respect?

They had been children.  What was death to them?

The adults inevitably finished faster without a gaggle of runts getting into the water, and shortly after, they would all be called together.  A moment of silence, when the adults bowed their heads, metaphorically and literally, and the children fidgeted, shifting from leg to leg, shivers restarting as their blood cooled.

Everyone would pile into the cars they came in, and they would all drive, single file, down to town, and descend on the same restaurant.  Menus passed among the families, and dish selections debated loudly – Baachan only eats vegetarian here, remember, and no pork for Auntie, get chicken instead – until a compromise reached.  Bowls of rice exchanged for plates of noodles. Leftovers boxed and given to the struggling relatives, the ones just starting to stand.  Arguments over who would cover the bill.

Disperse, and return.

-

The road stall Shiro directs Lance to stop at is small and faded, but flowers bloom from tables, from buckets, from holes in the lattice walls.   _1 for 5, 3 for 12_ the sign reads, but the only money they have is what was on them when they ran out into the desert.  Pidge assures them she could totally get them more, it would just be a few pennies here and there from a thousand different accounts, but Shiro doesn’t like the idea of her using her skills to skim cash.  They’re already taking time from their few days here at his behest, it pains him to make them do any more.

Keith and Lance sock him in the shoulder when his thoughts head in that direction.  Hunk sits with him until it passes.

He prefers Hunk’s method.

A heavily tanned man silently greets Shiro from beneath his hat.  How many, he asks.

Just one, Shiro replies.

The man nods.  We’ve got some gorgeous sunflowers, he says, and gestures.  They are beautiful – large, golden, and in full bloom.

Thanks, but I’m going to my family’s plot, Shiro declines.  Do you have any carnations?  The man nods again.  And, well, I was hoping for a mixture, Shiro starts.

There’s some roses down there that my wife grew, he says.  They always last for at least two weeks.  And there’s lilies if you’re not picky about colors.

Shiro peers under the table.  Pale roses, not quite blossomed, next to a small picking of pink lilies.  His mother always insisted on calling them alstroemerias, though.  He never asked why.

Shame we don’t have any chrysanthemums today, the man says.

It’s okay, Shiro says.  Everyone always brings those.

-

The bouquet he purchased is a riot of color; with the remains of the offerings his predecessor left, it smooths into something complementary, cohesive.  But even all together, there are not enough flowers to divide them evenly among the inserts.

It’s okay.  Shiro’s gotten used to improvising.

He starts with the oldest graves, the ones with no immediate family left alive.  They get five blossoms, mixed in with a few artificial ones.  Even if no one remembers to visit them for a while, they’ll have some color.  

Three or five flowers for the other markers, depending on the number of still breathing brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren.

Leaving four for his own.

_Takashi Shirogane_ , it reads, underscored by a set of dates, and the family crest emblazoned above.  Nothing in the middle, because he hated being called Tyler, and ‘Shiro’ Shirogane looked bizarre.

He only adopted that nickname at the Garrison, though.  Maybe his family didn’t even know he used it.

Standing there, it occurs to him that he never asked his mother where their _mon_ came from.  Where his great grandmother grew up, if there were any photos.  He never asked his Auntie what it had been like, growing up with his father for a brother.

-

What will it be like?  How long will it be before there is no one left to clean his headstone, forgotten until a distant descendant takes pity?

Until even his pictures are lost to time?

-

Shiro leaves three blossoms – one chrysanthemum, one rose, one carnation – at Takashi’s grave.  He takes the lily with him.

The restaurant down in town has been boarded up.  There are three new names, couples reunited at last.

His fingers are numb from the breeze.

He will not return.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully Shiro will be able to reclaim some of the things he left behind, but I can't imagine it's going to be easy.
> 
> Heavily inspired by my own experiences as a child, and as an adult with a considerably smaller family pool.


End file.
